Full of Hell – Trumpeting Ecstasy (Review)

Full of Hell are a US grindcore band, and this is their fifth album, (or third, if you don’t count their collaborative ones).

Full of Hell play grindcore that’s both primitive and innovative. Combing death metal, powerviolence, punk, crust, harsh electronics, and noise into a gruesomely violent and nasty grindcore package, Full of Hell are one of the very best when it comes to this kind of relentlessly vicious mixed-aggression deathgrind assault.

Yes; deathgrind, which is not a term you’d necessarily always associate with Full of Hell up to this point as much as you now would. Compared to their previous work I’d say that the band have reined in some of their more excessive electronic/noise influences, (although there’s still enough of this here to be notable), and dialled up the death metal/deathgrind influences, both in some of the brutal riffs and the soul-swallowing deathgrowls that are used. Combined with their already-cutting edge grindcore approach, the result is an album that absolutely slays.

Trumpeting Ecstasy is probably the apotheosis of the band’s artistic vision so far. The tracks on this savage ball of harshness are concise, condensed, utterly without filler, and so very well-realised that in some ways it’s kind of hard to imagine where the band can go from here in the future, so complete is the devastation they have wrought on this album. That, however, is a problem for their next release; for now, it’s sufficient to state that Trumpeting Ecstasy is their best work so far in their already high-quality career.

Although the album only lasts less than 24 minutes, the amount of engaging content and interesting ideas that they have crammed into this release is awe-inspiring. Each of the 11 songs has its own feel, identity, and distinct personality. Each one adds something to the album, and each one displays a variety of attack that most bands, especially ones of this extremity, would kill for.

Full of Hell are one of the best grindcore bands around at the moment. There’s only a handful of others that even come close. You must get this.